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In This Article:

Mentoring, coaching and counselling combine to form an excellent structure of guided informal learning. Andre van der Bijl provides insight into all three, pointing out their similarities, differences and benefits. He also highlights six factors that we should know when it comes to the strategic management of informal learning in our organisations.

by Andre van der Bijl

Andre van der Bijl, Senior lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyFaculty of Education and Social SciencesDepartment of Further Education and TrainingEmail: vanderbijla@cput.ac.zaTel: +21 680 1500

Mentoring and coaching has become popular HRD methods and over the past few years, a literal plethora of publications have been produced on coaching and mentoring. Some publications use the terms as a single concept, while others use only one of them or select one of the two after making a comparison. Some publications include them in a collection of forms of on-the-job training methods.

From a strategic human resources management perspective, the term used or the relationship between coaching and mentoring does not appear as important as how to manage mentoring and/or coaching processes. The management key, however, is not to spend too much time differentiating between them, but rather to regard them as dimensions of an interrelated process and to apply them strategically.

Mentoring, coaching and counsellingMentoring and coaching are HRD processes often used to induct and introduce staff into places of employment. The term mentor has its origins in Greek mythology. Mentor featured as a character in Homer’s Odyssey and as a character in Fenelon’s Adventures of Telemachus. In Homer’s publication, Mentor is the steward of the absent Odysseus’ household. In Fenelon’s publication, Mentor is a counsellor who guides the development of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son.

In its current use, mentoring is commonly used to describe a guided informal learning process in which an existing member of staff guides less-experienced people in the development of professional skills, attitudes and competencies. The term ‘mentoring’ is often used interchangeably with the terms coaching and counselling.

Coaching, in contrast to mentoring, has its origins in the sporting environment and is aimed at giving guidance to individuals or groups on the development of specific skills that are needed to be applied in a specific job environment.

Counselling has its origins in psychology and involves the development and maintenance of a two-way relationship. The purpose of counselling is the identification and overcoming of barriers to performance and work fulfilment.

Coaching is related to a job and involves the technicalities of specific workplace skills. Mentoring, on the other hand, includes both technical work related activities, as well as attitudinal and behavioural aspects required within a broad work and career context. Coaching can, therefore, be an element of a mentoring process. Mentoring, however, is not merely the sum total of coaching processes, although it can be. Mentoring is specifically linked to a kind of person being prepared for a specific kind of work environment. Mentoring is, according to Nigro, “a more informal and open-ended relationship than is coaching”. Mentors, he argues further, are counsellors, who help others up the corporate ladder, who have already overcome obstacles, who have ’impeccable credibility”, who have substance and who have already achieved. Coaching’s end result is task-related competency, while mentoring has an open ended result, possibly only determined as the guided learning process takes it course.

What binds mentoring, coaching and counselling, and differentiates them from other forms of learning, is their informal nature. Mentoring, coaching and counselling combine to form a structure of guided informal learning. »